Becoming Who We Are Ch. 09

"Maybe I don't mean that. I wish I knew how to say what I do mean. I just feel like dying, I'm so miserable.

"Nobody loves me. Nobody wants me. I'll never be any good at anything. So what's the point? I swear, no one would miss me if I did die. In fact, it would probably make my mother happy."

He blinked as the paper blurred before his eyes.

"Damn it! I've been punished and punished and punished for living when John died. I JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE."

He looked down at the paper, idly noting that his last words had torn a hole in the sheet. His fists clenched, then released. He decided to add two more thoughts.

"Tell Mark and Mary I love them and I'm sorry. And if you're reading this, Mom, I have only one thing to say to you: I HOPE YOU'LL BE HAPPY NOW!"

Leaving the notebook open on his desk, he went downstairs to root through his father's cluttered tool drawer in the kitchen. He remembered seeing something inside it that he could use.

**

As Mark sat on the couch with Melina's head in his lap, he played with her hair and let his mind wander. In the months since Homecoming, he had still not quite grasped the notion that this marvelous creature was his girlfriend. Well, of course, it wasn't as if he'd had trouble with girls before. In New York, he always found dates for dances -- when his parents allowed him to go, he thought with a mental snort. Still, he had never had a relationship that lasted more than a couple of weeks. And he had certainly never grown so close to someone who wasn't Chinese. As his finger traced patterns in her hair, he smiled to himself. It struck him as funny that here, in a place with far less racial diversity than New York, his set of friends was the most diverse he had ever had.

Melina felt his stomach muscles contract with amusement and opened her eyes.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing much. I was just thinking how much my life had changed."

Melina smiled up at him and he caressed the line of her jaw, admiring the way the lapis earrings looked next to her skin. Since he had given them to her, she had hardly taken them off.

"I feel the same way. We're only a hundred miles from where we used to live, but it's totally different."

"In a good way?"

"Mostly. If we hadn't have moved here, I wouldn't have met you."

"Thanks for mentioning the important stuff first."

"Any time. Of course, not everything's peachy all the time, but part of that might just be that everything keeps changing, whether we like it or not. Like, before this year, Julie would not have had her pregnancy scare. For instance."

"Hmm. That really got to you, didn't it?"

"Yeah," she sighed, taking a sip of her water. "I've never seen her so scared. She's always been my big sister, telling me what to do. It was weird to tell her what to do for once."

"Lucky for her you knew what to do. So what ever happened to Cliff anyway?"

"They're still going out. She's very serious about him."

"How serious?"

"Don't know. She was talking marriage at Christmas, but that might have changed, too." She shrugged and sat up. Mark put an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into him, enjoying the contact.

"Are you serious about me?" he asked, eyes twinkling.

"Fishing for compliments?"

"Hardly. Looking for information is more like it."

She gave his cheek a light kiss.

"I wouldn't hang around you so much if I weren't serious. How about you? Are you serious?"

"Always, except when I'm not."

She rolled her eyes.

"Answer the question."

"What question?"

"Are you serious?"

"If you're talking about whether I'm serious about you, the answer is yes."

She sighed.

"Good."

"Did you really have any doubts about that?"

"Not really. But it's nice to hear you say it."

He leaned in for a kiss. He loved the way her lips felt against his: warm and soft, yet resilient.

The church clock chimed four o'clock, which brought them abruptly to their senses. Both adjusted and smoothed their clothing.

"I guess we'd better get started on that history homework," Melina said, reaching for her backpack near the door. She dumped its contents on the floor and realized she had forgotten her history folder.

"Do you have that exam worksheet Cowden gave us last week? It looks like I have my book, but not my folder."

"It's at home. Don't you have yours?"

"Nope."

She sat back.

"Are you sure yours is at your house?"

"Yeah. It's on my desk."

"Well, can we go over there? I mean, would your mom mind?"

He paused, considering.

"I doubt it. She'll be at work by now. We're not supposed to have friends when they're not home, but I don't see why we can't chance it. We won't be there that long."

"If you're sure it won't get you in trouble..."

"Don't worry about it. The worst thing that can happen is she'll find out and yell at me. No big deal."

Melina eyed him, but he seemed confident the plan would work. They put on their coats, collected their books and headed out the door.

As they approached his house, both teens noticed the absence of Mrs. Tang's car. Melina relaxed. The woman had mellowed toward her since that first meeting in the Tang house, but the aftertaste of that encounter remained. Not wanting to provoke her again, Melina made sure to mind her manners around the woman.

Mark had his key out to open the front door, but the knob turned when he tried it.

"Guess Luke's home," he said, ushering her inside. "Let's go on upstairs."

Mark spotted the review sheet atop the neat stack of papers on his desk and grabbed it. Behind him, Melina shrugged out of her coat, plopped onto the bed and unzipped her backpack.

"You want to quiz me first?" he asked, joining her on the mattress.

"Sure."

They had reached only the fifth question before Melina's bladder made its presence known.

"Mind if we take a break? I think I drank too much water at my house," she asked.

"Bathroom's down the hall, second door on the left."

"Thanks."

She rose, darted down the hall, and tried the knob. It turned, but the door did not budge. Frowning, she rapped on the door.

"Is somebody in there?"

No answer. Melina's frown deepened. Perhaps the door was stuck. She tried the knob again. The door refused to move. She pushed harder. Nothing. Putting her ear to the door, she thought she heard water sloshing. She listened for a few more seconds, but the sound died away.

"Hey, Mark," she said, returning to his room. "Does that bathroom door stick or something?"

He looked up.

"I don't think so. At least, it never has."

"Well, I can't get it open."

"That's weird."

He got up and joined her in the hallway. The door refused to open for him either.

"What the hell...?"

"I could have sworn I heard water or something a couple of minutes ago, but I can't hear anything now. And this doesn't look like the kind of lock you can lock by mistake, like the ones we used to have in Gaithersburg."

Their eyes met, then flicked to the locked door. Mark raised his fist and pounded on the door.

"Luke! Are you in there?"

Silence.

"Luke! It's Mark! Answer me!"

Silence.

Their panic rising, the teens stared at each other in horror. Closing her eyes, Melina deliberately slowed her breathing, almost hearing her mother say that a panicked rescuer is a useless rescuer. As Mark threw himself against the unyielding door, a scene from the Gaithersburg townhouse came to her. Her dad, opening the door Julie had accidentally locked, explaining that if you could not open a door the traditional way, try the side with the hinges.

"Does this hallway have a light?" she asked suddenly.

"What the hell difference does that make?"

"We need to see the door and the hinges. We might be able to get in that way."

His eyes round, Mark gaped at her for a moment, then jerked away to find the hall switch. The light revealed the deadbolt bridging the space between the door and the frame, and the old-fashioned hinges on which the door swung.

"He's locked himself in," she muttered, more to herself than to Mark.

"Maybe I can kick the door in," Mark said, and put his plan into action.

Forcing herself to keep her cool, Melina stared at the hinges, trying to remember how her father had done it. He had aimed the screwdriver upward and hit it, forcing the little bar out of the hinge's loops. Beside her, Mark was panting and calling his brother's name. She put her hand on his arm to get his attention.

"Go get me a hammer and a screwdriver," she said.

"What for?"

"So we can get this door open, from the hinge side. We're never going to break it down. Too solid."

He stared at her for a moment before comprehension flooded his face. "Okay."

He tore down the stairs to his father's tool drawer, reappearing within a minute with the necessary tools.

"What do we do?"

"Aim the screwdriver at the bar inside those metal loops," she said, touching the spot in question. "You ought to be able to hammer the thing up and out."

It took several tries, with both teens feeling their jaws tighten at each missed stroke. Just as Melina decided to wrench the tools from Mark's hands so she could try, he loosened the top hinge and pulled the bar out. The bottom hinge cooperated much more quickly. The door came off its hinges with the creak. The teens rushed into the small room, then stopped short.

"Oh, my God!" Melina gasped, covering her mouth with her hands.

Mark could only stare. His brother lay in a tub of crimson water, his nose puffy, one eye blackened and swollen shut. Even as they watched, his head slowly slid toward the water's surface.

A long moment passed. Then Melina gave a convulsive shudder and found herself able to think again.

"Call nine-one-one!" she shouted, shoving Mark towards the door. "Get an ambulance here!"

Mark wavered for a moment, then ran from the room.

Biting her lip, Melina knelt beside the tub, eased her hands into the hot, bloody water, and lifted one of the boy's arms. Blood flowed from an ugly gash at his wrist. She reached over the still form to grab his other arm. It had an identical cut. She raised both of his arms and looked wildly around the room. The towels caught her eye as Mark reappeared.

"They're coming," he said. His eyes widened as he noticed the cuts.

"Get those hand towels," Melina barked. "We can use them to cover the cuts and maybe stop the bleeding."

Ripping the towels from the bar, Mark jumped over to join her.

"I'll take one arm, you take the other?" he suggested, already wrapping a towel carefully around one of his brother's wrists. Melina did the same.

"Now we have to hold his arms above his heart level and apply pressure," she said.

"Is his heart still beating?" he asked.

Melina's stomach lurched. She had forgotten to check!

"I don't know," she admitted. "Can you hold his arm while I check?"

Luke's neck felt slippery and cool as Melina searched for his carotid artery. She had to press harder on his neck then she would have liked, but she thought she detected a faint pulse. She held her other hand just above his open mouth, trying to feel any exhalations. Was that a slight puff of air?

"His heart's beating, and I think he's breathing."

"What do we do now?"

"We keep doing what we're doing," she said, frantically trying to recall the material on which she had so often quizzed her mother. "Uh, we probably ought to talk to him, too. My mom says hearing's the last sense to go before someone goes unconscious."

Mark nodded.

"Luke?" he said. "I don't know why you did this, but we're here with you and we're going to get you out of this. You're going to be okay, and we're going to find whoever beat you up and make him pay. Can you hear me at all?"

Luke lay perfectly still. Mark closed his eyes against the sight.

"Luke, it's Melina. I'm here too, and everything's going to be all right. You're going to be all right. I promise. The ambulance will be here soon, and you'll go to the hospital, and they'll fix you up good as new. I'll even put in a good word for you with the nurses -- they were real nice to me, and I'll make sure they're nice to you."

She knew she was babbling, saying the first silly thing that came into her head, but it seemed important to let him know people cared about him. How awful to feel so disconnected that death seemed preferable to life!

"Maybe my mom will be on the ambulance that's coming. She'll take great of you. She's the best. She's even studying to be a paramedic, so she really knows a lot."

With a nod to Mark, she checked Luke's pulse again. She could still feel a distant throb. As she strained to feel the boy's breathing, the faint sound of a siren penetrated the bathroom.

"Thank God," Mark sighed. "I thought they'd never get here."

"Me either."

The siren grew louder, then stopped as the ambulance pulled up to the house. A few seconds later, the doorbell shrilled.

"Did you leave the front door unlocked?" Melina asked.

"I don't think so," Mark replied, glancing at the arm he held. She unclasped one of her hands from the wrist she held and grasped the other arm.

"Better hurry," she said. "I'm not sure how long I can hold them both."

But Mark had already dashed out the door. He thundered down the stairs as the doorbell rang again. Flinging open the front door, he almost wept at the sight of Kate Taylor and three other EMTs.

"Mark, honey," she said, shocked to see the boy. "What's happened?"

"My brother. He's upstairs. He... he slit his wrists. Come on. I'll show you."

He led the four to the bathroom, where Melina still held the boy's arms above the water. Kate allowed herself a surge of pride in her daughter.

"Hi, Mom," her daughter said in a small voice. "Luke's still got a pulse and I think he's breathing, but that's all I know."

Two of the EMTs moved up to the tub. Melina let go of the boy's wrists as older, professional hands took over. She rolled back on her heels and stood unsteadily, her shoulders sagging with relief at the arrival of the team, her legs quivering with strain.

"How long has he been like this?" Kate asked.

Mark and Melina looked at each other.

"I don't know," Mark said. "At least twenty minutes, maybe longer."

"All right," Kate said, turning to the other EMT not at the tub. "Let's go get the litter."

"Will he be okay?" Mark said, but the pair had already trotted downstairs. Mark and Melina backed out of the bathroom, wanting to watch, but not wanting to get in the way.

"How old's your brother?" one of the medics called over his shoulder.

"Nineteen," Mark replied.

"Where are your parents?"

"At work."

"Can you call one of them and tell them to meet us at the hospital?"

"All right."

Mark's feet dragged as he made his way down the hall to his parents' bedroom. He hated the thought of calling his parents. On the one hand, he felt sorry for them: it seemed like Mary had only just recovered. On the other, he wasn't sure how they'd respond to the news that their least-loved child had tried to commit suicide. His hand trembling, he picked up the receiver and punched in the restaurant's number.

"Lucky Garden," his mother said.

"Mom, it's Mark."

"What?" she said, hearing the tension in his voice.

"You need to come home. There's... been... It's Luke."

"What about him?" Mrs. Tang snapped.

"They're taking him to the hospital."

"What?"

"The ambulance is here and they're taking him to the hospital."

"Why?"

Mark hesitated, and closed his eyes.

"He slit his wrists."

Mrs. Tang sank to the stool behind her. Surely she had heard Mark incorrectly.

"He what?"

"He slit his wrists," Mark said, more forcefully this time.

"What'd he do a stupid thing like that for?" she asked, recovering her usual tone.

"I don't know. All I know is that he did, and the EMT told me to call you so you or Dad can meet them at the hospital."

"But we have the dinner rush..."

"Mom! This is serious! He may die! Don't you get it?"

"He's just trying to get attention," she said, but a note of uncertainty colored her tone. "He wouldn't really hurt himself."

"Mom! I saw the cuts. He totally meant to hurt himself."

"Oh, all right," she said. "I'll go to the hospital. You stay at home. How he manages to be more trouble than the rest of you put together, I'll never know."

"Just go," Mark said, and hung up.

He sat on the bed for a moment, drumming his fingers on his thighs. An inspiration hit him and he strode to Luke's room. He saw an open notebook on the desk, picked it up and read.

Melina and Kate found him with his head bowed and tears coursing down his cheeks. He thrust the notebook at Melina. Both women scanned the note before Melina threw her arms around Mark, as her mother patted his shoulder.

"Why didn't I see it coming?" he moaned. "I should've known."

"I'm awfully sorry, Mark," Kate said. "I know this isn't an easy time, and I hate to intrude, but we're ready to go. Did you find one of your parents?"

He nodded, not trusting his voice.

"Will someone come to the hospital?"

"My mom."

"Good. If I may, I'd like to borrow that notebook."

As Mark extended it to her, they heard a metallic clatter in the hallway as Kate's colleagues maneuvered the litter out of the bathroom.

"I have to run," Kate said. "But you both did very, very well with the first aid; in fact, you probably saved his life. I'm very proud of you both."

She gave Melina's hair a quick caress and dashed down the hall to join her peers. Downstairs, a door slammed. Melina felt the strength drain from her legs and sank onto the bed. Mark joined her.

For a while, they simply sat, eyes staring, brains numb, everything forgotten but the horror of the afternoon. Mark shuddered, and Melina put her arm around him.

"You okay?"

"I'm cold," he said, shivering.

"So am I," she said, only then feeling the chill that enveloped her body. "Of course, we're both pretty wet."

"And the water was pretty hot," Mark added sadly. "He really meant to do it, didn't he?"

"It looks that way," she said cautiously. "But he'll be okay. My mom says the doctors at the hospital are terrific, and she ought to know."

"How could I have not seen it?" he demanded. "My own brother felt so miserable he wanted to die, and I didn't even know."

"How could you?" Melina asked. "It's not like people talk about suicide over their corn flakes or anything. And you've said yourself your family doesn't do open, candid communication, especially about things that matter."

"I should have seen it," Mark said.

"I'm telling you, you couldn't have seen it. My mom says most times, nobody sees something like this coming."

"I should have seen how depressed he was."

"What would you have done if you had?" Melina asked, exasperated.

"I don't know," Mark said after several seconds of silence. "But I should have seen it coming."

Fresh tears stung his cheeks. Melina hugged him to her and rocked him gently, stroking his hair as her own tears flowed.

"Nobody could have seen it coming," she said as she felt her tears slow. "I'm sorry, but you couldn't have stopped him. You've got to accept that."

Her firm tone brought Mark's head up. A ragged sigh escaped from him as he wiped his eyes.

"I guess you're right," he said, sullen. "That doesn't mean I have to like it."

"I didn't say you did."

He brooded for another minute or two before he saw the stains on his sleeves.

"Geez, we're all bloody," he exclaimed.

"Yeah," she agreed, examining her own clothes. "I guess we'd better get out of these things and into something warm and dry."

"How about sweats?" Mark said. "I have a bunch of them."

"Perfect."

"Come on. We can change in my room."

On their way, they passed the bathroom and couldn't help but look in. Wet, bloody towels lay on the floor beside the empty tub. Mark noted gratefully that someone had drained it. But the wall bore marks from the EMTs' equipment, and dark red splashes flecked the walls and floor. His mother would not appreciate that, he thought dryly.